Origin

First used in the Crimean War, an ambulance was originally a mobile temporary hospital—a field hospital—that followed an army from place to place. The term was later applied to a wagon or cart used for carrying wounded soldiers off the battlefield, which in turn led to its modern meaning. Ambulance comes from the French hôpital ambulant, literally ‘walking hospital’: the root is Latin ambulare, ‘to walk’, which gave us words such as alley (Late Middle English), amble (Middle English), and early 17th-century ambulate (a formal way of saying ‘walk’). Ambulance chaser is a wry nickname for a lawyer. The first example of the term, from 1897, tells us that ‘In New York City there is a style of lawyers known to the profession as “ambulance chasers”, because they are on hand wherever there is a railway wreck, or a street-car collision…with…their offers of professional services.’